Sunday, July 17, 2005

Happy Anniversary

We just got back from Costa Rica around 1 a.m. last Thursday morning. It is worth noting that the trip from Central America to Atlanta took roughly 4 hours. It took 10 more hours to get to Knoxville. It took another day before all our luggage caught up to us. The nice lady at the Delta baggage counter suggested we wait in the airport until the next two planes arrived so they wouldn't have to send our luggage to our house by courier. We might could have ridden bicycles home from Atlanta faster than the Delta airplane got us there and she wanted us to hang around after midnight to see if, by chance, the baggage people in Atlanta noticed our stuff and threw it on the next plane...

"Why sure, nice lady...no problem..." We left.

Irony happens, I have decided. You don't have to look for it very hard but most folks seem to go through life in a fog and unaware. I have two little pieces of the world for you to ponder, this morning. They seem particularly poignant because I just traveled in a country that has no Military and gets along fairly well.

They don't really have much of a police force either. WE chatted with two Costa Rican policemen at the bus station in San Jose after a thief ran off with Joseph's backpack. They were very apologetic, but pointed out that they had warned us to be careful watch our luggage.

Anyway, atomic weapons celebrated an anniversary on July 16. This is the anniversary of the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb, a weapon so terrible that it should never have been used. It was.

People are still dying from the effects. Suicide bombers use much more humane methods.

Naturally, the American press didn't mention this, but don't worry, the rest of the world remembers.

Conservative Republicans are so proud of Ronald Reagan because they say he ended the cold war and ended the threat of nuclear anhilation at the same time.

If you believe that, you probably believe that Karl Rove just wanted to set the record straight when he blew the cover off Brewster-Jennings, an entire covert CIA operation, ruining years of work and putting a multitude of patriotic American CIA agents in jeapardy of being murdered.

Well Ronnie didn't really cause the end of the cold war with the Soviet Union and at the same time, the seeds of the future threat of nuclear anhilation were being sown by Richard Nixon on his visits to China. Since then, China has become the most dangerous country in the world, second only to the United States of America.

China has nuclear weapons. But they would never use them, right? Nuclear weapons are just too terrible, right?

America used the Atomic bomb on Japan. between one and two hundred thousand Japanese civilians died in a blinding flash of incediary light so hot that it has no color. Atoms themselves were destroyed along with those innocent people. 9 years after this incredible act of war, the American Congress voted to place "In God We Trust" on our money and to require our children to pledge an oath to "one nation under God" so the whole world would know how godly and virtuous we are.

Nearly every single scientist that worked on the atom bomb project became a pacifist. One of them gave this quote to the press on this anniversary. it is from the Bhagivad Gita and is a statement by the Hindu god, Vishnu:

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

The article is from the British press..of course! It is worth reading:

As we pour our dollars into China in order to wear and then throw away cheaper and cheaper things we don't really need, China becomes richer and richer. For a Communist country, they got a lot of Billionaires, now. No middle class, but lots of dirt poor peasants to help make very rich people, very richer people

In addition to having billionaires, they got the bomb. They've always had Generals, too. One Chinese General had this to say last week.

Ironic, don't you think?

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.

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About Me

I live as deep in the woods as I can, on the banks of White's Creek where it cuts through the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. It's a good spot for someone who loves people but gets enough of them from time to time. My wife and kids put up with my eccentricities well enough and seem to like where we live, even though we have to drive a good bit to live our active lifestyle. It is the one incongruity of my existence. Our house is a passive solar design with an electrically heated hot tub. Contradictions are everywhere, but we do what we can.
We have a resident Eagle population in the gorge that salutes us most mornings with a fly by during coffee. It's a good spot to live.